I called home today to hear Kenzie absolutely sobbing in the background. Cindy finally convinced her to talk to me and tell me what was wrong. After an extended period of time hearing her cry uncontrollably, she told me, "Aidan didn't want to play with me today. He was playing with some other girl that he didn't even know. He didn't even know her name!" In reconstructing the scene of the crime, I learned that it was a girl from another class (presumably older) and he wouldn't have anything to do with Kenzie.

She said, "He wouldn't even talk to me. [sob, sob] I tried to ask him why, but he kept saying 'no' to me. Friends are supposed to like each other. I wanted to play with him." I reassured her that it's okay for people to have lots of friends and it's okay for Aidan to have other friends. She responded, "Yes, but friends are supposed to play with each other."

Trying a different approach, I tried to get her to list with me the friends that she has, to help her realize there's more to life than Aidan! That seemed to help as we ran through the list of names of other kids. Then we talked about how she can't control Aidan, but she can choose how she reacts to it and how she behaves. Her response was, "If he doesn't like me then I won't play with him. If he's not going to like me then I'm not going to like him." Alright, but maybe we're going too far...I tried to bring it back into perspective by telling her that we can talk to our friends if they hurt our feelings. Her response, "but he wouldn't let me get close to him to tell him."

Stay tuned for more preschool drama on Thursday.